Perhaps the only thing that changes more rapidly than technology in today's amped-up digital environment is the terminology used to describe that technology and its impact on consumers--and marketers. One recent example is the advent of the term "omnichannel" marketing, which many struggle to differentiate from another relatively recent term--"multichannel" marketing. Still, those who are most enmeshed in the field say there is a key distinction between the two, and it's one that will have an impact on marketers as they continue to seek ways of having a meaningful impact on the consumers they hope to engage. And, importantly, it's less about technology than it may seem.

May 2011 Issue

News Features

WikiLeaks has raised a lot of questions, most of which have nothing to do with the stolen documents the organization leaked to the world. Julian Assange and his whistle-blowing organization have made many people question the notion of the press and wonder what implications these kinds of organizations have for businesses with confidential information. All these questions have spurred the American government to act.

In his Gettysburg Address, President Abraham Lincoln expressed the hope that he envisioned for our government: "that this nation, under God, shall have a new birth of freedom-and that government of the people, by the people, for the people, shall not perish from the earth." As the citizenry grows accustomed to immediate access to global information via smartphones, social media apps, Twitter, YouTube, Facebook, blogs, videos, and streaming media, it has been difficult for bureaucrats to assimilate. At least one company has been keeping tabs on the situation, though.

Imagine being a Digital Native--part of a generation that has never known a world in which the internet didn't exist. From the time you could work a mouse, you were instant messaging your friends and asking Google questions about your homework. Eventually, you probably got a smartphone, and now you can text your friends while in class or scan a bar code in a store to find the best price on your next purchase. And you're also making your way into the workforce.

Featured Stories

Discovery has never been a simple process for organizations, even in the "old days" when discovery generally entailed gathering piles of documents into large boxes and wading through them by hand. Information long ago evolved from print documents to electronic formats, which has created challenges and opportunities.

By now, most of us know the basic ingredients for a good website. The mobile experience, though, is still a relatively new concept compared to the traditional web—so figuring out how to provide the best mobile search interface remains a work in progress. Yet organizations with digital content are wasting no time working with the technology to expand their traditional web search capabilities into the mobile space.

Columns

In our real-time world, one person with passion and an internet connection can make a huge difference. The first few months of 2011 have been a great example of that. In January, I followed the terrible flood situation in and around Brisbane in Queensland, Australia. As a result, I've also followed the remarkable story of Baked Relief, a crowdsourced support group that emerged to help those affected by this natural disaster.

For Hollywood studios, rigidly defined distribution windows have traditionally dictated the sequential release of a movie: first exclusively in theaters, then on DVD, then on premium cable, and so forth. Previously pleasant relationships are being strained as theater owners try to maintain their place in the chain and studios try to bleed out as many bucks as are left in Walmart's dying (but still substantial) DVD revenues. As these battles distract the traditional Hollywood players, new platforms are quickly sneaking past the guards.

I have a not-so-secret secret. I like to write fiction and hope to someday write the great American novel, leave behind my glamorous life as a technology journalist, and retreat to the woods of New Hampshire to become a Salinger-esque recluse. Of course, that little confession could have been made by just about anyone who makes his or her living as a writer of any sort. But wait … I am, as aforementioned, a technology journalist! Shouldn't I be leaving the fuddy-duddy world of publishing behind and hawking my works of literary genius on the web?

My inbox runneth over with can't-miss bargain offers. I am not sure how many Groupon and LivingSocial daily deal lists I actually subscribed to, but each morning my inbox is stuffed with 50%-off offers for everything from massages to theater tickets in several nearby locales. Clearly, one of the most lucrative innovations in emarketing in recent years has been the group buying and daily deal model. When LivingSocial sold a $20 voucher from Amazon.com (one of its primary investors) for $10, 1.4 million people took the bait ... including me.

The term "cloud computing" has become ubiquitous in the IT world. It has stretched out into the rest of the business world too, becoming one of the hottest buzzwords in recent memory. Some believe with a passion that all IT and data will ultimately reside in "the cloud." Others take a more nuanced view.

Faces of EContent

Case Studies

As a global law firm, Orrick had documents in repositories around the world. If someone at the firm needed to access the information in one of these repositories, he would need to search each one separately until he found the document he was looking for, taking up valuable time and resources. "The document repositories are not really user friendly," says Mark Salamon, senior knowledge analyst at Orrick. "So one of the main things we wanted to accomplish was being able to search all that content at once, and also being able to search it more easily."